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Arab League Postpones Meeting; Mubarak To Meet Syria's Assad
WASHINGTON D.C., Dec. 8 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - An emergency meeting
Sunday of foreign ministers of the Arab League on the situation between the Palestinians and Israel was postponed Saturday to reportedly give U.S. peace efforts additional time.
A diplomat who requested anonymity said the Arab League officials wanted to give
U.S. President George W. Bush's administration's latest initiative a chance.
"The fiery statements that usually come out of these meetings can do nothing to serve the Palestinian and Arab interests," the diplomat said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The summit of Arab League foreign ministers, which was set for Doha, Qatar, has been postponed indefinitely. The meeting was to be held in tandem with meetings this weekend with the Organization of the Islamic Conference.
Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa said in a statement published in Egyptian newspapers Saturday that the Arab League would still convene a consultative meeting on the sidelines of the OIC meeting. Consultative meetings do not have decision-making powers in league procedure.
Arab diplomats in Cairo said there was little support for a full-fledged meeting of the 22-member organization of Arab nations. And Israel announced that it would decide whether it would allow Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat to travel from the West Bank to Doha for the meeting.
The aborted meeting was to be held at the request of Arafat, whose government has suffered a series of punishing military attacks by Israel since last weekend's bombings by the Islamic Resistance Movement, or Hamas, which killed 25 Israelis and wounded 200 more in bombings in Jerusalem and Haifa.
Israel is demanding that Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority crackdown harder on Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
The Palestinians, for their part, have called for an end to Israel's policy of assassinating
Palestinians and the lifting of Israeli sanctions, notably a crippling blockade on the Palestinian territories.
Meanwhile, it was announced that Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak would visit Damascus on Sunday to hold consultations with Syrian President Bashar Assad over the situation in the region.
Mubarak sent Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher to Israel Thursday for talks with hard-line Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Israeli foreign minister Shimon Peres and Arafat in an attempt to end renewed violence.
Maher visited Israel and the Palestinian territories this week in an attempt to defuse tensions, but returned to Cairo on Friday saying that his mission "failed to bring about a convergence of our points of view."
Mubarak said he was skeptical about the chances for a diplomatic breakthrough.
"I haven't despaired, but what I see is that, after all the effort, there's no point if Sharon continues his current policies," Mubarak told the Lebanese daily newspaper,
As-Safir, when asked about the prospects for peace with Sharon. "What I see says there's no hope, but perhaps a miracle will happen. The Americans could take charge and provide hope."
Mubarak said if Israel killed Arafat it would only destabilize the region further.
"If they make the mistake of killing Arafat...it'll be hard to find another person around whom the Palestinians will gather," Mubarak said. "Different leaders are going to emerge... and then we'll have chaos," he said.
It was also announced Saturday that Maher will meet Palestinian minister of international cooperation Nabil Shaath in Cairo on Sunday to discuss efforts to end the upsurge in Israeli-Palestinian violence, foreign ministry sources told Agence France-Presse (AFP) Saturday.
Shaath was due to travel to Cairo Saturday night to discuss the results of Palestinian-Israeli security talks also attended by U.S. peace envoy Anthony Zinni and representatives of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), they said.
Both Shaath and Peres are expected at a European Union meeting in Brussels on Monday, and each will also be invited to address E.U. foreign ministers about the crisis in the Middle East.
E.U. officials have said that it hoped that the two men would also meet face-to-face.
But Amr Moussa said Saturday a Peres-Shaath meeting would be "just a meeting for television, as Peres did not have full authority from Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon backing up any verbal commitments he might make," he told AFP.
At least 833 Palestinians and 222 Israelis have died in the 14 months of violence, which broke out after peace talks stalled.
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